REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed from microfilm by Gordon Chancellor; transcription typed and checked against microfilm by Kees Rookmaaker 2.2006; transcription corrected by Chancellor 3.2006. The Galapagos pages (pp. 18b-51b) were compared by Randal Keynes with the microfilm, suggestions incorporated in the electronic text by Rookmaaker 6.2006. Edited and corrected against the microfilm by John van Wyhe 8.2007. Transcription revised and annotated 8-12.2008. RN26

NOTE: This notebook is bound in red leather with the border blind embossed: the brass clasp is intact. The front of the notebook has a paper label with 'Galapagos. Otaheite Lima' written in ink. The notebook was written primarily between August and November 1835. It has a total of 100 pages within the covers, 34 pages written from the front cover inwards (pp. 1a-34a), and 66 pages written from the back cover inwards (pp. 1b-66b).

Current whereabouts unknown. The notebook was part of the Darwin Collection at Down House. It was microfilmed by Cambridge University Library (and sold by Micromethods) in 1969. The notebook has been missing, presumably stolen, since around 1983 or shortly before, and is registered as stolen property.

Editorial symbols used in the transcription:
[some text] 'some text' is an editorial insertion [some text] 'some text' is the conjectured reading of an ambiguous word or passage[some text] 'some text' is a description of a word or passage that cannot be transcribed< > word(s) destroyed <some text> 'some text' is a description of a destroyed word or passageText in small red font is a hyperlink or notes added by the editors.

Reproduced with the permission of English Heritage (Darwin Collection at Down House) and William Huxley Darwin. Photograph of the cover reproduced by permission of the President and Council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Hills all soft & worn into that sort of bifurcating ridges which is peculiar to degradation of soft matter; in all the ranges which I saw were composed of very soft gneiss or protogene, which is interlaced by veins of same figure as

quartz of a siliceo-Feldspath nature or Trapoidal or semiporphyritic, intersect each other, thin out downwards; & pass in places into surrounding rock yet some localities have air of true dykes: Having passed Prado true Porphyry

The plain of St Jago it is only on the upper parts or border of basin where the sand or red clay & Tosca & Volcanic ashes are found, the lower part either excavated by rivers or retreat of ocean presents the true & pure

Great blocks of Granite other side of Ancud Bay Chiloe, like the Geneva block1

Salt mine near mouth of R Guyaquil

Roe — stone of Copiapò

1 The erratic block known as Pierre de Gouté. See Playfair 1802 1: 387: "One of the largest blocks of granite that we know of, is on the east side of the lake of Geneva, called Pierre de Gouté, about ten feet in height, with a horizontal section of fifteen by twenty." Darwin referred to this erratic in DAR 35.151-152 and DAR 35.288-303.

Cannot understand, A. Cruikshank1 some pebble at about that elevation on some of the hills

1 'Mr. A. Cruckshanks' reported by Lyell 1830-3, vol. 3, p. 130 to have found sea pebbles 200m above sea level at Callao. Darwin referred to Cruckshanks in South America (p. 51) as providing yet more excellent evidence of dramatic elevation, some of it in historical times (see introduction to the Copiapo Notebook)

1 Carrion crows = Waterton 1833. A letter by P. Hunter in the same volume disputed that vultures found their food by scent: 'The means by which the vulture (Vultur Aura L.) traces its food', pp. 83-84 and extracts, pp. 84-88, of an article by John James Audubon from Jameson's Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, which claimed that the Turkey Buzzard did not find its food by scent. Waterton replied, pp. 162-171, refuting Audobon's claims. See Journal of researches, 2d ed., p. 184.

very pretty, but ceaseless mist & gloom: Have no idea of merits of view; excepting from day, from S Lorenzo — Clouds clearing away leaving strata, always give a majestic air to landscape. But even that day air not clear — Indians very different from Puelche: — Dined with Consul General1

Limekilns — Main rocks are calcareous & shaly, some tolerably pure black Limestone with thinner strata, intervening as to the South, others rather siliceous & grey coloured; — general dip, Easterly — injected & fronted by hills of green feldspathic rock passing into a greenstone There is much of the

1 Richard Henry Corfield (1804-97), English merchant living in Valparaiso and Shrewsbury schoolfellow of Darwin's. Darwin stayed several times at his house in the Almendral, including his illness in September and October 1834.

Met a 2 immense Turpin:1 [hiss], took little notice of me. — They well match the rugged Lava. —

Eating a Prickly Pear — which is well known to

1 Galapagos tortoise. Darwin recorded in the Beagle diary entry for 21 September 1835: 'In my walk I met two very large Tortoises (circumference of shell about 7 ft). One was eating a Cactus & then quietly walked away. — The other gave a deep & loud hiss & then drew back his head.' p. 354.

away a more solid rock now remains [crystals] prismatic, very uneven; but cracks filled up: & covered with low trees — These characters, define the very line of junction otherwise not distinguishable — the old cone

from slaggy lava, from the base of which the Lava appear to have flowed or rather the [pile] formed directly subsequently to Stream: In the streams near all, Craters, covered gutters tolerably smooth side. 2.4

Great tendency to nodular or Concretionary structure in all Volcanic Sandstones

1 Galapagos finches, commonly known as 'Darwin's finches'. This is the first known explicit recording by Darwin of the Galapagos finches and here presumably referring to the thick-billed large ground finch listed as Geospiza magnirostris, Birds, p. 100, plate 36; see specimen 3331 in Zoology notes, p. 297.

1 Ellis 1829 recounted how a horse being landed at Tahiti in 1817 fell overboard and the natives on the ship 'plunged into the water, and followed [the horse] like a shoal of sharks or porpoises'. Darwin cited this in Journal of researches, p. 486, with the observation 'The Tahitians have the dexterity of amphibious animals in the water.'

this track so wonderful only famine & murders [ever] could have induced people to have discovered them — Men speak a little English — breakfast — make fire rubbing. — Gauchos like Carpenters tool — really most fearful road 7000 ft

19th [November 1835] — returned by other road — Bananas, avoiding cascades sweeping round hill side, entered valley high lower down — only one place where rope was required — knifes edge, enormous precipices on each hand. — Men very